Easily one of the greatest episodes of Star Trek: The Next Generation, Conspiracy featured a nasty race of alien parasites that infested Starfleet command and saw Picard and his crew facing down their own commanders in a race to stop the creatures taking over the Federation.

We like it so much, we even made the parasites one of our favourite Trek monsters a while ago.

How about exploring something similar with Kirk, Spock and the rest, allowing the filmmakers to explore corruption and illegal wars, Trek-style?

McCoy could get infected, forcing Kirk and Spock to try to save their - ironically ailing - doctor friend...

Drama, tension and weird beasts sprouting out of flesh. Trek does Alien!

Some of the more emotionally satisfying moments of the original series saw the two friends brought back into conflict, either through emotional means ( Amok Time , which sees Spock’s mating urge lead to him battling Kirk on Vulcan) or necessity ( The Cage , with Spock disobeying orders to help Captain Pike).

There's plenty in the new film that could lead to issues down the line – what if some of the surviving Vulcans decide that revenge for the destruction of Vulcan is logical and Spock decides to help?

We’ve seen he can be a callous git in his treatment of Nero at the end of Trek .

It would be another personal plot that would let Orci, Kurtzman and fellow writer Damon Lindelof explore the characters they crafted even further, without needing some huge, wannabe epic threat.